Banking

Due to innovations in financial technology and changes in the enabling environment, the number of financially excluded adults across Asia and the Pacific has dropped to about 1 billion.

Increased access to affordable financial services can be a lever for Asians to smooth consumption, manage risk and improve their lives through better savings options, access to credit, and cheaper payments or remittances.

The South African retail banking sector is characterised by high barriers to entry. The sector is concentrated, with four of the largest banks – Standard Bank, Absa, First National Bank and Nedbank – accounting for more than 80% of retail deposits.

How Brexit would affect house prices and homeowners is one of the big questions in the build up to the UK’s EU referendum vote. George Osborne has said that mortgage rates will rise if there’s an Out vote.

Early in the financial crisis, the US forced all large banks to take an infusion of capital. This helped put a floor under the US financial system. Regulators and stakeholders encouraged US banks to address the significant nonperforming loan problem.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has given Australia’s banks a bollocking for unethical behaviour, suggesting they have not repaid the support they received during the global financial crisis.

Speaking at Westpac’s 199th birthday lunch - a day after the Australian Securities and Investment Commission launched legal action against the bank for allegedly manipulating the bank bill swap rate (BBSW) - Turnbull said many Australians were asking whether banks had lived up “to the standards we expect”.

Barclays has announced it is to withdraw from Africa. It will gradually reduce its 62% stake in Barclays Africa Group over the next two to three years – and, naturally, this raises questions about the prospects for banking in Africa, where Barclays has had a presence since 1925.

HSBC’s decision to keep its headquarters in London is good news for the British government. An exit would have been seen as a vote of no confidence by one of the world’s major financial institutions. However, it is even better news for the British economy.